Jun 3 WW

I took Miriam to go see Wonder Woman this afternoon. I loved the movie, but what I loved even more was having Miriam sitting next to me, watching what I was watching. Everything I could possibly write in this post to explain what it felt like to watch that movie with my 11.5-year-old daughter would end up sounding like every feminist cliche statement ever (and I'm sure such posts are already proliferating on the internet).

So I will just say: I loved that in this movie, Miriam saw women who were strong - not just one strong woman who is an aberration in her universe, but a community of strong women who have mad fighting skillz. Who wear armor and ride horses and have names like Hippolyta and Antiope (especially for a girl who studied Greek history this year in school!). Can you imagine seeing that as an impressionable young girl?

(I will also just say that my biggest worry about this movie, to the extent that I took the time to think about a biggest worry, is that it would be so sexed up. And it wasn't! I never once, not one time, felt like the camera lingered or leered or exploited Wonder Woman's (admittedly amazing) body. I mean, in the movie itself she is of course recognized as being gorgeous, but it was never icky. This is something that I feel that the Marvel movies have failed at with Black Widow, and the X-Men movies majorly failed at with Mystique. So bravo, Wonder Woman!)

On the bike ride home, Miriam and I talked about chemical weapons, and doing what's right even if people around you refuse to, and how there is never just the one bad guy on a clear side of a conflict. Oh, it made me so happy to experience that movie and those conversations with her!

Sterling watched the trailer with us earlier today, and when Miriam and I came home from the movie, we saw that he had repurposed a shiny slap-bracelet as a WW-style arm cuff. He was slapping it on and then pumping his arms around in a powerful way. That's my boy.